J. E. Jumonville Sr.

John Enoul Jumonville Sr., also known as Boyzee Jumonville (December 20, 1919 – May 4, 1983), was a businessman, farmer, and horse breeder from Ventress in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in the Louisiana State Senate, District 17, from 1968 to 1976.^[1]

Jumonville was born in Paincourtville in Assumption Parish in South Louisiana, to Enoul Adolph and Lilly Lucena Brown Jumonville.^[2] A former dredging contractor, he acquired great wealth in his otherwise poor Pointe Coupee Parish when natural gas was discovered on five thousand acres of land which he had purchased in 1947 for as little as $4 per acre. The land lies on the Tuscaloosa Trend, which stretches across Louisiana north of New Orleans to the Texas state line. Jumonville called his land purchase "the best real estate deal since the Indians sold Manhattan Island for $24."^[3] In 1982, a year before Jumonville's death, two gas wells were producing annual income in royalties of $10 million. Jumonville ostentatiously displayed his wealth through the purchase of his own jet airplane and three Rolls-Royce vehicles. He married his second wife, the former Barbara Nations (1939-2001), formerly Barbara Estes, the daughter of Claude Benjamin Nations and the former Laura Ellen Boone, in Rayville in 1967.^[4] She sported a 16-carat diamond ring, the setting of which once came off and rolled under a nightclub table in Las Vegas, Nevada.^[3]

Jumonville was known for his theatrics on the Senate floor. Once in the early 1970s, he pulled off one of his boots and threw it at the clock in an effort to stop time and prolong debate on the topic at hand. His fellow lawmakers were then known to drink alcohol and become rowdy during the proceedings.^[5]

Jumonville was succeeded in the state Senate by his son from his first marriage, J. E. Jumonville Jr., also a businessman and horse breeder from Pointe Coupee Parish.^[1]

The Jumonville-Memorial Technical Institute in New Roads is named in Jumonville's honor.^[6]

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